Stream It Or Skip It: ‘24 Hours with Gaspar’ on Netflix, an Indonesian Crime-Drama About a Detective Who’s Gonna Be Dead By Dawn

24 Hours with Gaspar (now streaming on Netflix) is director Yosep Anggi Noen’s stylish adaptation of Sabda Armandio’s dystopian novel about a hardboiled Indonesian detective trying to tie up one big, long, standing, dangling loose end before his heart goes kaplooey in 24 hours. It’s not the most uplifting story, but Noen shows an eye for beauty-in-bleakness – and more than a few Tarantinoisms – in this uneven, but worthy neo-futuro crime-drama.

24 HOURS WITH GASPAR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “My name is Gaspar. My heart is on the right side.” This is Gaspar’s (Reza Rahadian) mantra of sorts – he repeats it in gritty noir voiceover a handful of times throughout the movie, reminding us of the core truth of his character, namely, that his heart is quite literally on the right side of his body, a condition that’s shortening his life, and that his heart, metaphorically, is in the right place, and is more good than evil. And by shortening his life, I mean he’s got about 24 hours to live before, I dunno, it stops working or explodes or whatever it’s going to do to kill him. And so BAM, we get big block numbers on the screen, counting down his final hours and minutes and seconds. The question is, what’s he going to do with his last day on this mortal plane?

The answer to that is, seek closure. Resolve things. Specifically, what happened to the only true friend he ever had. We see Kirana (Shofia Shireen) in flashbacks alongside young Gaspar (Ali Fikry), and they’re all smiles and joy until one fateful day when he went fishing and came home and she was gone and he never saw her again. Since then, the world seems to have gone to hell, or at least begun its descent: urban decay, dire news reports (one references “plague no. 36” having occurred in 2025) an apparent population decrease and the rugged beauty of overgrown forests starting to take over once again. Gaspar sees the worst of humanity working as a detective, and he’s just discovered mass graves that seem to be part of a trafficking operation. And now that he’s dying, he wants to know what happened to Kirana. Time’s ticking. 

Well, actually, “what happened” was likely terrible, so Gaspar focuses on a nothing-to-lose quest for revenge. He eyeballs Wan Ali (Iswadi Pratama) as a guy who knows things, and is probably responsible for things. He owns a jewelry store and is a scumblot on the underboot of humanity, giving off a skeezy I’ve-killed-a-man-before vibe. Gaspar realizes he can’t take on Wan Ali alone, so he takes turns flashing back to cheery halcyon days of his youth and working through his greasy-grimy present-day task, which involves rounding up people to help him. There’s his compadre Agnes (Shenina Cinnamon), who runs an underground fight club; his and Kirana’s childhood friend Kik (Laura Basuki) and her S.O. Njet (Kristo Immanuel); and Wan Ali’s disgruntled employee Yadi (Sal Priadi) and his recently widowed mother Tati (Dewi Arawan), who’s either amusingly confused comic relief or a mildly callous portrayal of senility. Is this leading to some sort of happy ending? No spoilers, but, well, probably not.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Tarantino never made a dystopian thriller (thank god!), but the pulpy vibes and Ennio Morricone-derived/pop-mashup score is very much derived from the Pulp Fiction filmmaker’s oeuvre. Visually, it’s Blade Runneresque at times – or more accurately, reminiscent of the Blade Runner-twice-removed aesthetic of Duncan Jones’ Mute or Source Code.

Performance Worth Watching: Cinnamon is the most charismatic among the supporting cast, and begs to be more of a well-rounded character than just a plot device (opportunities for such are ignored). That leaves Rahadian to carry the vast bulk of Gaspar, and his performance is more dutiful than soulful, but the fact that we care even somewhat about what happens is a testament to his performance.

Memorable Dialogue: Yadi sums up Gaspar with a pithy observation: “He looks more like a robber than someone who’d commit to marriage.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: 24 Hours with Gaspar starts promisingly and ends poignantly, but struggles through a lengthy middle act that suffers from pacing issues and a lack of memorable moments. At first, Noen seems to be establishing a Wick-derived action-laden mystery, with a couple of stylishly shot, keenly choreographed fight sequences. Once Gaspar is charged up and dropped into the slot-car track of the plot, we’re subject to a couple too many redundant flashbacks and his plodding snooping-around for clues and allies; although it occasionally pops with an amusing one-liner or colorful side character, it tends to be repetitive and draggy, rife with wearisome neo-noir flourishes (voiceover narration, grim neon lighting) and all but begging for a centerpiece action sequence.

What keeps the film afloat is Noen’s visual acumen, which dynamically captures subtle details about the setting, allowing us moments to ruminate on the mystery of What Happened to Everything. Once Gaspar assembles his (sigh) ragtag group of misfits, the narrative finally finds solid footing, establishing some dramatic tension, playing up the operatic countdown-to-death gravitas and, finally, at last, setting the emotional hook and reaching a reasonably satisfying payoff – better late than never, I suppose. 

Our Call: 24 Hours with Gaspar engages our hearts, eyes and brains just enough to warrant a recommendation, with the caveat that you keep your expectations modest. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.